_Then, again, recent investigations have established the fact that the range of human personality must be extended to include something more than our normal self-consciousness. Our Ego is not the simple unitary thing older psychologists taught, but a composite structure embracing a self that extends far beyond the limit of our conscious waking life. Just as experimental physics has shown that each pencil of sunlight embraces an almost endless succession of invisible rays as well as the visible radiation we perceive, so experimental psychology has shown that each human personality embraces an unconscious as well as a conscious self. Mr Myers, using Du Perl's conception of a threshold, has termed the former our_ subliminal self. _And just as the invisible radiation of the sun can only be rendered perceptible by some agency outside our vision, so this subliminal self reveals itself only by some agency outside our own volition. The subliminal self not only contains the record of unheeded past impressions--a latent memory--but also has activities and faculties far transcending the range of our conscious self. In this it also resembles the invisible radiation of the sun, which is the main source of life and energy in this world._ _Certainly the everyday processes of the development, nutrition, and repair of our body and brain, which go on automatically and unconsciously within us, are far beyond the powers of our conscious personality. All life shares with us this miraculous automatism. No chemist, with all his appliances, can turn breadstuff into brainstuff or hay into milk. Further, the subliminal self seems to have faculties which can be emancipated from the limitations of our ordinary life. Glimpses of this we get when the conscious self is in abeyance, as in sleep, hypnosis, and trance. Here and there we find certain individuals through whom this sub- or supra-liminal self manifests itself more freely than through others; they have been termed "mediums," a word, it is true, that suggests Browning's "Sludge." But, as scientific investigation has shown all mesmerists and dowsers are not charlatans, so it has shown all mediums are not rogues._ _This extension of human faculty, revealing, as it does, more profoundly the mysterious depths of our being, enables us to explain many phenomena that have been attributed to discarnate human beings. The question arises, Does it explain all so-called Spiritualistic phenomena? In my opinion, and in that of others who have given more time to their critical investigation than I have, it does not. At present we have to grope our way, but the ground is being cleared, and the direction which the future explorer of these unknown regions has to take is becoming more evident._ Occultism and Common-Sense CHAPTER I SCIENCE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE "SUPERNATURAL"